


Waltz

by hereticalvision



Series: Triangle [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Infidelity, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-22
Updated: 2014-01-22
Packaged: 2018-01-09 15:40:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1147734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hereticalvision/pseuds/hereticalvision
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>I'm hanging in there, don't you see, In this process of elimination.</i> Three steps in a waltz.  Three points on a triangle.  Three people in her marriage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waltz

_We're all weeping now, weeping because there ain't nothing we can do to protect you_

Ginny finally passed away at 3am on Sunday. "Finally" because she had been suffering for hours, growing weaker and weaker and more and more afraid while Harry screamed at the healers, begging them to just save his wife. But really it was "suddenly" – a dormant disease activated by a potion.

"What potion?" Harry had demanded. The healer, terrified, had stuttered something about confidentiality and patient privilege, but there was no way to face down Harry Potter in a fury – Voldemort himself had failed.

The contraceptive potion, Hermione realised immediately. The potion that Ginny had been taking, the potion she'd asked Hermione to help her find eight years ago. The potion she'd never stopped taking despite what she must have told Harry, who now stood opposite Hermione saying, "That can't be – we were trying for another baby."

That night, Hermione would fetch James and Albus and Lily from school, and hold them while Harry had to tell them their mother was dying. She would clutch the hand of the woman who'd become her best friend, certainly the best female friend she'd ever had. She'd promise Ginny to look after them all, and she'd manage a smile as she left the room.

But the hardest thing was looking at Harry's face as he realised that the thing taking his wife away was something she had lied to him about. She was dying because she'd been hiding the potion, because she hadn't been able to tell Harry the truth.

Hermione crossed over to him once and held on to him, tight as she could.

 _I'm so sorry,_ she couldn't say. She held her silence, and held Harry while his children sobbed in Ginny's room.

 

_O children lift up your voice, lift up your voice  
Children rejoice, rejoice_

Ginny had wanted to spend her final hours in the room she'd shared with her husband all these years; Hermione wondered if she'd known how cruel that was. Harry couldn't go back there now, couldn't take comfort in the almost-presence of her there. It was permeated by her death. Harry slept on the sofa meanwhile; the kids were home and occupying their respective rooms and Hermione didn't dare let him near the room he'd been preparing for the baby.

A room in their house for a baby Ginny didn't even want. Hermione had gone in there herself and tried not to picture the tense lines around Ginny's mouth in the last few months. Had it been a decision never talked through, never properly discussed? Had Ginny just not known how to say no? Hermione's head began to swim as she looked at the pale yellow walls, the perfect charm to turn the ceiling translucent which Harry must have cast with such _care_. She had warded the door behind her when she left – she didn't want Harry to try to find refuge there.

Ron was sitting at the table when she got home. She breathed him in deep and held him hard, thinking, _thank God it wasn't you!_ , but what she said was, "I don't know how he'll make it through tomorrow."

Tomorrow, the funeral, was worse. Harry was always a hair's breadth from losing it and Hermione didn't know what would scare the children worse – seeing him cry or hearing him rage. James and Lily had always been closer to Ginny than to Harry. It had worried him, Ron had mentioned once in passing. _Do I make them feel second-best to Al?_ Ron had met Hermione's eyes and snorted. 

Ron hadn't said it, not to Harry, not to her. _No, Harry, you come second best to your wife._ But it bothered Hermione anyway, the way it hovered in the air, unsaid and therefore, somehow, doubly powerful. James and Lily loved their mother best because they just _did_. There was no real reason – James was more like Ginny than like Harry, certainly, but Lily had only her mother's face beneath her Dad's black hair. Her fumbling speech was all Harry.

Rose and Hugo (she hadn't meant for them to have R and H as initials with the sexes inverted, she really hadn't, she hadn't thought and Ron had liked the idea and she hadn't realised until much later how repulsive it really was) were an even split, more or less. She and Ron talked about it sometimes: _your_ blush, _my_ brains, _your_ height, _my_ hair. She'd never thought about how it might feel to have Ron leave her one day and be forced to look at all the traces of him left in her children. How it might feel to live with a constant reminder that he'd let her down and to have to actually work at loving these people, these magnificent creatures. She'd never thought that Rose and Hugo who she loved so fiercely would bring her pain just by being, but that was what she was watching happen to Harry when it came to James and Lily, and for all her brains she had no idea what to do about it. She watched Harry back away from them and James _glare_ while he wrapped his arms tight around Lily. Al crossed over to speak with Harry, who managed a smile for his son before he disappeared up the stairs, bottle of something in hand.

Al's face screwed itself up. Ron met her gaze, and without needing to speak a word he went to Al as Hermione turned to follow Harry up the stairs.

By the time she reached him, he was already pounding on the warded door, five seconds away from screaming. She cast a silencing charm to keep his children from hearing him and she stayed with him all night, only leaving once to tell Ron that she wouldn't be coming home.

 

_Hey little train! We are all jumping on the train that goes to the Kingdom  
We're happy, Ma, we're having fun and the train ain't even left the station_

Hermione had never felt so strung out in all her life. This, walking on eggshells around everyone in her life, was worse than anything else ever had been. Worse even than the endless nights in the tent without Ron, when she’d been so lost and hurt and desperate, muffling her sobs with her fist, praying that Harry wouldn’t hear her. Then she’d only had to worry about him and herself and that had somehow been easier, even with the fury of Ron’s departure gnawing her. But now, now she had to think about James, Lily and Al, and watch their father fail them. She had to balance that against her own children, her husband, her in-laws, all of whom were suffering. She had to keep them together, console Ron who missed Ginny more even than she had expected, quiet Molly’s tirades, stroke Rose’s hair, reassure Hugo that no one else was going to die, but most of all she had to stop Harry from lashing out and losing it completely.

He could barely look at the Weasleys, even Ron. He could barely face his own children. And Hermione was glad, to be honest, that they weren’t around to see him drunk – not ranting or weeping but absolutely gone and silent. Hermione was so afraid the few times she saw it, so afraid that Harry had just disappeared.

The children were going to have to return to Hogwarts soon. James burst into his father’s room when Hermione was there, snapped at Harry to get up, do something, talk to us, _look at me!_ and Harry had looked up at him bleary-eyed and said, “I’m sorry.” Hermione had slipped out then, but whatever had been said after, she didn’t think it had helped because James didn’t bother to tell Harry goodbye when the children finally left.

Hermione was glad for their sakes that they didn’t have to see Harry like this, but it made Harry worse. He was alone all the time except when she was there. And Molly sniffed about how he should be there for his children, and the Auror Office had forced him to take a leave of absence because he was so checked out all the time, and Ron resented him for taking so much of Hermione’s time. She couldn’t bear it. She only felt normal on those too-few nights she made it home exhausted, so exhausted Ron wouldn’t try to talk to her, would instead put his arms around her silently and let her soak up the warmth of him. But even that was starting to feel like distance, the silence and the loss lying between them.

Hermione had no one to cry with. She was getting used to it, was the worst part. Molly’s sulky silence, the barely-concealed resentment in her children’s letters, Ron’s desperate desire for her to be normal, to be sexual, to _feel_ again.

“I’m going to stop round Harry’s before I come home,” she flooed him to say.

“Like always,” Ron said with an edge in his voice.

Hermione pressed her knuckles into her forehead, scraped them over her skin before looking at her husband again. “Ron, you know he can’t be left alone.”

“I do know,” Ron spat, and Hermione knew that he wanted to say more, wanted to have the fight, wanted to demand that she come back to him but she couldn’t, couldn’t take it. Couldn’t leave Harry by himself, estranged from everyone. She just had to figure out a way to reconnect him with someone, _anyone_ else and then she could live her own life again and this would stop.

“I’m going,” she said flatly and cut the connection.

 

_Hey, little train! Wait for me! I once was blind but now I see  
Have you left a seat for me? Is that such a stretch of the imagination?_

When she got there, at first it could really have been any night. Silence in the living room as she came through the Floo. A bottle on the kitchen table, and Harry watching her silently from the floor as she took off her coat and slung it over the back of the dining room chair. Usually around now was when she would start talking, saying something chattering and bright that Harry would sometimes respond to, but more often ignore.

Hermione had taken a deep breath and was preparing to launch when Harry pre-empted her. “Ginny didn’t really love me.”

A blow to the stomach couldn’t have winded Hermione more thoroughly.

“What? No, Harry,” Hermione fell to her knees on the floor, next the where Harry sat with his back to the wall, his knees up in front of him, his arms resting across the top. He didn’t look at her. “Harry, how can you say that?”

Harry did look at her then, and the emptiness behind his eyes was more terrible than Hermione had ever imagined. “She lied. She let me think we were going to have another baby. She let me work myself into a frenzy over something she knew would never happen. Why would she do that if she loved me?”

Hermione didn’t know. Couldn’t answer.

“It was my fault,” Harry went on, looking away again, his voice still the same soft monotone. “I pushed her. She said no and I said please and she must have felt like I wouldn’t want her. So maybe she did love me until I wore it out pushing her. She must have loved me once.”

“Harry, please,” Hermione begged, “please stop this.”

“And I pushed her away,” Harry went on, relentless. “And I killed her.”

“It wasn’t your _fault_ ,” Hermione near-screamed at him, tears exploding out of her as she reached out to put her arms around him as best she could. His legs fell flat against the floor as though even keeping them bent against his chest had proven too much effort.

“Mine or hers,” he was saying, weeping again, terrible after weeks of absolute nothingness. “It was my fault or hers.”

“It was no one’s fault,” Hermione told him over and over again. “No one’s.”

“I wanted,” Harry choked out, “I wanted…”

“I know,” Hermione soothed him, her own eyes still wet.

It was utterly inevitable that he should press his damp face to hers. His body shuddered with the force of his heart breaking and Hermione held on tight as she could to stop him shattering into pieces. Inevitable that his face turned to hers, seeking comfort and that she opened her mouth to his, thinking of nothing but offering herself to him.

When they’d been in school together, Hermione had never really thought about Harry romantically; it had always, always been Ron. So much so that she’d never thought anything of leaping on Harry when he seemed to need a hug, or ruffling his hair, or smacking him around the head if she thought he needed it. Brotherly, sisterly, that was their relationship. They’d never so much as danced together, until that once in the tent. Ginny hundreds of miles away, Ron having abandoned them, they clung to each other for just a moment. Just long enough for Hermione to understand that if she held on any longer she’d be choosing for all four of them.

Now, Harry sobbed into her mouth even as his hand came up to cradle her jaw and the horror of Ginny’s death and the terrible yawning chasm it had left in all their lives threatened to rise up and drown Hermione completely. She didn’t think of Ron at all. She thought of how tired she’d been, how numb, how worn out and how the desperation in Harry’s mouth mirrored her own. She opened her mouth to him, the angle awkward because of how they’d been sitting. Harry stretched himself against her as he rose to his knees, mouthing at her face while he moved, clinging on to her as though she were the last real, solid thing in a world of shadows and ghosts.

She should have stopped him. She should have known that he wasn’t in his right mind, should have seen the consequences hanging like the Sword of Damocles and forced him to stop. But there was no future or thought on the kitchen floor that night, just the overwhelming urge to feel connected, to feel safe again, to _feel_. Harry had stopped shaking, his hands finding their way down her body as though they’d done this a hundred times before. They kept touching, never letting go, as though aware that the world would crash back in if they were to think about what they were doing. Harry picked her up blindly, carrying her to the couch where he’d been sleeping. That alone said that he knew who she was, knew she wasn’t Ginny and that this wasn’t right, but his fingers were beneath her underwear and his face was pressed into her neck, and Hermione stifled another sob and wrapped her legs around Harry’s waist.

 

_Hey little train! We are all jumping on the train that goes to the Kingdom  
We're happy, Ma, we're having fun it's beyond my wildest expectation_

“What are you going to tell Ron?” said Harry. He was facing away from her. The moment had passed, the madness ebbed, and now the consequences were starting to occur to both of them.

“I don't know,” Hermione said, twisting her fingers around and around the sheets that had been a wedding present to Harry and Ginny. “He won't… He'd never forgive me.”

“He'd never forgive _us_ ,” Harry said.

Hermione dressed herself slowly. Harry didn’t look at her as she put herself back together. She didn’t know what to say to him before she left, so she simply left.

Ron was there when she got home. She hadn’t gone straight there. She’d gone back to her office first, to cry a little more, fix her make up, charm away the marks Harry had left on her breasts. She’d looked at her reflection and wondered if it showed.

It evidently didn’t. Ron looked at her, biting his lip, and greeted her with, “I’m sorry I snapped. I know you’re trying to be a good friend to Harry, but I miss you.”

“I miss you, too,” Hermione whispered, telling the truth and feeling like a monster.

“I made dinner for us,” Ron offered.

Hermione dug her nails into her palm so hard so was amazed she didn’t draw blood. Her voice was perfectly normal when she said, “That was very kind of you, Ronald.”

That night Ron held her in his arms again. She had to fight not to scream into his chest as she found herself grateful, so grateful that he didn’t see it and hadn’t tried to make love to her.

In the morning Hermione went to work as usual. She was her usual self, if a little snappish. All day the thought of the night before rose in her throat like bile. She couldn’t eat.

That night she stood at the Floo. There was a decision to be made, and this time there weren’t four of them involved. There were three, Harry Ron Hermione, and another three, James Al Lily, and another two, Rose Hugo, and how many more, how many more.

Hermione swallowed. She would go to Harry. She would tell him she couldn’t do this.

She would leave him to drown on his own, without dragging her down.

When she walked through the Floo into Harry’s house, he looked at her with something like hope in his eyes.

“I was afraid,” he said. “I wasn’t sure you’d come back.”

Hermione pushed her face into her hands and sobbed. The relief on his face was too much. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave Harry alone.

Harry made a terrible hurt sound in his throat, and dragged her into his arms.

“I’m sorry,” she said, kept saying. “I’m so sorry.”

This time, she was the one who kissed Harry first.

 

_Hey little train! Wait for me! I was held in chains but now I'm free  
I'm hanging in there, don't you see, in this process of elimination_

Harry was wrong. Ron could have forgiven them for once. He would have hated it, but he could have forgiven them if it had only been once.

But they just kept going. Trying to blot everything out except each other. Trying to create a world where they had no children, no in-laws. Where they had each other and no one else could reach them.

Sometimes Harry does something to her that Ginny must have loved, and Hermione’s lack of reaction throws him. Sometimes Hermione rolls over and the black hair of her lover makes her panic for a moment before she remembers, and panic again for different reasons. Sometimes Hermione knows that all she’s done is ensure they will both drown.

Sometimes she wonders if that might be what love really is.

~fin

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this in 2010 after seeing Movie DH1 as the dance scene stuck in my mind more than I would have expected. Uses lyrics from that song, [O Children](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWeR2F7ETLU) by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.


End file.
